Menhaden fishing has been in the Chesapeake bay for a long time. And for a long time people have bashed them for there inability to catch fish without any supporting evidence. The big rockfish come and go from the bay. once every five years or so we get a damn good stripper season. this year was that year. The fishing was great! Tons of monster rockfish caught this year in the bay!!! And since people were catching fish they stopped bashing on omega so much. It’s funny how that works…. Anyway the bays fish/crab population isn’t suffering because of fishing from omega. If anything is causing issues it was the introduction of the blue catfish into our ecosystem and the damns put into the rivers that prevent fish from getting to there natural spawning grounds. We’ve cut there spawning grounds in half and then have the blue cats eating absolutely anything and everything. How do we not expect that to effect the bay and its rockfish population? Or even take that into consideration when talking about these subjects? Add the fact y’all are now considering small drum a sport fish and they are coming and eating a lot of the same food as the rockfish. Small drum were never in the bay in numbers. We would have a few big breeders come up for spawning and every now and then someone was catching one. Now you catch one every other cast it’s almost annoying. I’m sure Texas and Louisiana stocking programs have a small part in that… long story short there is a lot more at play affecting the bay then the menhaden fishing and I often wonder why non of them are ever talked about.